a nowhere man and his nowhere child
by Travithian Axile
Summary: Jimmy and Claire have a secret they're not telling. Five times they leave Amelia behind and the one time they had no choice. 4.20 backstory AU, one-shot, Amelia POV.


**Title: **a nowhere man and his nowhere child

**Characters/Pairings:** Jimmy/Amelia, Claire

**Rating:** PG

**Summary:** Jimmy and Claire have a secret they're not telling. Five times they leave Amelia behind and the one time they had no choice. 4.20 backstory AU.

**Word Count:** 3,701

**Notes: **Yes, ANOTHER 4.20 AU.

**Warnings: **Novak angst.

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><p><em>Don't tell your mother about<em>

_Where you go when the lights are down_

_And don't tell your mother how_

_You're up to no good, nowhere to be found_

- The Sundays, "Don't Tell Your Mother"

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><p><strong>I.<strong>

Jimmy is leaning over Amelia when the monitor at the bedside goes insane - the readings washed out by jumping, distorted lines and the air slowly filling with a distant, muted shriek, as though someone's screaming through a gag shoved into their mouth. Jimmy freezes, his smile falling away, one hand just touching the damp crown of their daughter's head and his eyes darting here and there, searching for God knows what as though the source isn't right _there _in front of him.

"I'm sorry," the nurse babbles, rushing forward as Amelia winces away from the broken monitor. "I'll get someone to fix it right away-" and then she flicks a switch but nothing happens. Instead the sound grows louder and shriller and now Amelia can _feel _it, a low steady note in the marrow of her bones, in the gray matter of her brain, dancing along her nerves with the distant promise of coming pain. It pricks at the bubble of warm, vague happiness fogging her senses and suddenly everything feels oddly surreal: the warm weight in her arms, the grounding pressure of Jimmy's hand on her shoulder and the throbbing ache between her legs. But then Claire shifts in her arms and instinct rushes in to fill her hollow spaces, moving her hands to cover Claire's ears as quickly as possible. It must work because Claire ceases to struggle, her face shifting blindly upward towards the corner of the room, and Jimmy is looking there too but there is nothing and no one there.

"Stop it," Jimmy says, low and intent, and for a moment she can't tell who he is speaking to until the doctor sends the nurse out of the room in haste. "Stop it, _please."_

As though his words are a command the room falls into ringing, blessed silence. Only for a moment, because then Claire is crying and Jimmy is touching her tenderly, softly, like a sacred object and his face is lit up and transcendent like they are in church, standing in the colored light coming through the stained glass and hymns on their lips, a moment of glory stretched out in an everlasting crescendo.

"She's our very own miracle," Jimmy says in reverence and if this was any other moment she might have smacked him over the head for being overly cheesy and sentimental, but in the here and now her newborn daughter's tiny heart beats together with hers in a rapid tattoo and she can only agree with an overwhelming intensity that will probably embarrass her later when she dwells on it.

She smiles at Jimmy, and he smiles back, but only for a second before his gaze skips back to Claire, and then Claire reaches out and touches Jimmy with one tiny curled fist, gently, as though in blessing.

"Looks like _someone's _going to be a regular daddy's girl," Amelia jokes, and Jimmy lets out a little _ha_ of laughter, his breath swelling warmly against her skin. But his eyes are serious as he kisses Claire and he says, simply, "Yes."

**II.**

Claire is two when she somehow escapes from her crib. Jimmy and Amelia almost go mad turning the house upside-down looking for her, crawling underneath cabinets and knocking over the laundry basket and, in a final act of desperation, trawling through the bushes in the garden until Amelia swears that she will cut them all down and replace the whole lot with artificial grass.

"How did she get out?" she asks in despair, looking at the still-latched side of the crib. The situation might be, she supposes, remotely amusing to anyone who can actually find it within themselves to join in with the canned laughter on the old sitcoms, though she personally can't find anything funny about the slightly deranged look on Jimmy's face, his mussed-up hair where he had run his fingers through about a hundred times and the dirt on the knees of his jeans.

"I don't know," Jimmy answers, leaning back on the windowsill and twisting his head around to look out as though he might find Claire's location scrawled in the clouds. The curtains flare around him in a sudden burst of wind, momentarily sticking against the sweat on his skin. Jimmy's eyes widen minutely before they close and his lips move in a silent litany. Amelia feels like a prayer or two wouldn't be amiss right now, herself, but before she can go over and join Jimmy his eyes open, something behind them sharpening and snapping into focus. "I know...I think I know where she is," he announces, as surely as though God had reached down and tapped the knowledge into his brain. Obviously that would be within His power, but Amelia can't help but feel a flash of discomfort at the surety in Jimmy's voice. "Another hunch?" she asks, neutral.

Jimmy smirks. "Better than that," he says, but doesn't elaborate.

In the end they locate Claire just as Jimmy had predicted, in the car curled up like a cat under the driver's wheel. The radio is on, oddly enough, humming soft, nonsensical static until Jimmy flicks it off with a frown, brows creased in thought.

"I'm not even going to ask," Amelia mutters, closing and opening the car door to check that the lock hasn't come loose or something. Jimmy has already scooped up Claire, wiping ineffectually at the stains on her clothes. Her eyes blink sleepily open, looking quizzically upward. "Ca?" she asks, reaching out with hands that curl and uncurl in irregular spurts, grasping at air. "Ca?"

"That's enough excitement for one day, sweetie," Jimmy says, and from then on they make sure that the door to the baby room is always locked. If anything, it makes a great story to repeat to their friends, a mystery they can speculate wildly on in a spot of good fun.

Claire isn't quite as appreciate of this pastime as she grows up, nor of the moniker of Houdini that hounds her for a couple of years around the dinner table whenever Jimmy and Amelia invite friends over. She doesn't even remember how or why, she complains, so why don't they just _quit _this already?

**III.**

It's Amelia's turn to cook dinner tonight, Jimmy having declared mutiny in order to drag Claire away for some alone time. When Amelia comes out of the kitchen to get them in for dinner, she catches the two of them sitting on the porch, legs stretched before them so their toes point straight up at the sky. It is a clear night and the stars are out, shining small and white against the dark like scattered salt. Their bodies are pressed together into a single silhouette, Claire's head tipped against Jimmy's shoulder and their hands curled loosely on the step.

Claire is seven years old and her voice is high and thready as she repeats the names of the stars after Jimmy who points them out one by one like old friends. They are so absorbed they don't notice Amelia standing behind them, their names stuck in her throat like oddly-shaped blocks. Something indefinable tightens her chest; nameless only because she refuses to give what she feels any real acknowledgment, as though it will go away if she ignores it long enough.

The porch light flickers, buzzing as it fights to stay on and both Jimmy and Claire look up in unison with a precision that is almost eerie. In the blinking light their faces are still and watchful as that of the moai, any other hint of expression lost in the contrast between light and dark. The sudden silence drapes them all in a shroud that Amelia finds herself desperate to throw off, but once again she is unable to speak, the three of them frozen in a ridiculous tableau with only the tortured complaints of the light droning in between them almost like a voice.

"Jimmy? Claire?' she manages, and just like that, the spell breaks, Jimmy pulling his legs toward himself to stand up and offering Claire a hand. "You're hungry too, aren't you, Claire?" he asks, rubbing at his stomach in an exaggerated gesture but Amelia can't help but think it's for her benefit, even when Claire giggles and copies him.

Dinner is cold that night, but no one comments about it.

**IV.**

As soon as she is old enough Claire insists on walking to school, just fifteen minutes away and across a couple of roads that Jimmy held her hand over the first few times, teaching her vigilance and how to look up and down the street before crossing.

It's safe enough, or so Amelia thinks until one day shortly after Claire steps out the door she hears a great, horrible scream of twisting metal, and in its wake the lesser but far more terrifying scream of a little girl. She can't quite remember what happened afterward, just a blur of events running into each other like smeared paint: the hot pavement burning through the thin soles of her slippers, Jimmy ahead of her in his work clothes and proper shoes and tie flapping around his neck, shoving through the gathering crowd.

The car, a hulking silver Volkswagen, is rammed up against a lamppost, its bonnet crumpled like foil paper. Blood and broken glass litter the cream upholstery, and it takes Amelia a second to realize that the driver slumped across the wheel is never going to get up again, and that the white shining through the dark hair is bone. It's uncharitable and Amelia feels ashamed of herself afterwards, but in that hot, jagged moment closing around her heart like the jaws of a beast she thinks that if that bastard has hurt Claire then death is really less than he deserves.

On the other side of the street Jimmy stoops and then rises, calling her name, and all of Amelia's dark thoughts wing away in a beat when she sees Claire, held securely in their neighbor's grip, thank _God _for Roger. Jimmy takes over from there, hugging Claire tightly and absorbing the tremors of her shaking body into himself with a tremulous, grateful smile.

"There must be an angel watching over you," Roger tells Claire, meaning to comfort, and Amelia isn't too far away that she can miss the funny expression that comes and goes over Claire's face like a ripple in a pond passing in and out of the sunlight.

"Yes, there is," Jimmy says, still pale-faced and shocky, and that must be the only reason for that iron certainty in his tone for something they can never know, and he grips Claire's hand until their knuckles turn a matching shade of white.

**V.**

"As if it isn't bad enough you're having delusions," Amelia shouts, "Now you're passing them to _our daughter _too_? _How could you?"

Jimmy simply gazes back with calm, placid eyes, until Amelia longs to slap that unnatural stillness from him, pour her anger and betrayal into him like black poison until he is just like her, until he too will shout and strike the walls so that she will feel less guilt. _He is so sure. _That is the terrible thing, the root of his madness; that he is so sure that he is right and that she is wrong.

"I didn't tell her anything," he informs her as pleasantly as if they are discussing nothing more important than what to bring along for breakfast at church. "I _do _know better than that, Amelia." For a fleeting moment he looks faintly troubled, a line puckering the space between his brows. "It was _Castiel _who chose her."

"Castiel, the angel," Amelia says flatly. Jimmy just nods as though he can't hear the absolute insanity that is coming out from his mouth. "What would an angel of the Lord want from our little girl? Or from _you_, for that matter?"

Jimmy shrugs. "I don't know. It's not really my place to question what God wants." He sits up straighter, looking excited, a little proud, and her heart breaks all over again at the sight. It's all very well for _Claire _to indulge in the fantasy of a grand destiny, for a child to color in the missing edges of the world with make-believe and an overactive imagination but for _Jimmy _to do so...it suggests that maybe their life together isn't as happy as she thought it was, that he needed some form of consolation to spice things up. Jimmy had always been devout so it isn't surprising that his need for adventure would manifest in the form of a holy mission from God. Or, at least, that was what the report from the first session had said.

But they can't go on living a lie like this - _Amelia_ can't go on like this, trapped forever in the shadow of an imaginary angel. So she lays down her ultimatum: take the medicine, or she'll leave with Claire in the morning. She leaves certain that Jimmy will obey; even if he's fallen in love with something else, something brighter and better and far more extraordinary than she can ever be, he hasn't ever stopped loving Claire. They are closer than ever, these days, almost always glued at the hip swapping their fantastic stories with each other. It is probably not healthy for Claire to spend any more time with Jimmy but God help her, Amelia wants to give Jimmy a chance. He's still a good man, a good father. She doesn't want him to leave her.

The next day, both Jimmy and Claire are gone.

The police are very sympathetic, as are the neighbors, the friends from church; "He was _so _nice, we never saw that coming," they say, until Amelia thinks her head will burst from all the condolences, the meaningless comforting words: "There's a nationwide search going on. They'll be found soon, love, don't worry."

It should be Jimmy telling her not to worry; should be Jimmy's arm around her shoulders, not Roger's, his cooking on the table and not the numerous casseroles that she slots into the fridge afterwards one by one, numb in the realization that it is her _husband _who has done this to her, shattered her heart into pieces and walked away, her daughter who skipped eagerly in his wake without ever looking back.

_He took her away, _Amelia tries to tell herself, in the middle of the night with the ruins of yet another nightmare littered around her feet. Water drips from her face, hollow-cheeked and pale as a ghost in the mirror. _He forced her to go with him, she wouldn't..._

But she remembers _daddy's girl _and star-watching and a thousand other little things snowballed over the years into a crushing, jealous load in her chest and she bows her head and she knows the truth of it, stark and hopeless as her hollow eyes in the mirror. Maybe she'll be happier with him. It's a harmless sort of craziness after all, believing that angels talk to you. It could have been worse.

_This, _Amelia thinks, sick with misery and resentment, is much, much worse.

**VI.**

The doorbell rings.

"Wait a moment," Amelia yells, getting up from the floor. She almost trips over the staple gun she'd left lying carelessly around but rights herself in time against the wall. Once, Jimmy would have caught her in his arms, kissed her neck and made some quip about clumsiness and how she ought to try it more often. Amelia shoves the memory away, boxes it up as she's began boxing up all their belongings. It gets easier with time, or so she tells herself.

She doesn't recognize the shape behind the door at first, blurred by the curtain as it is. But she recognizes the voice, small and tentative, whispering: "Mommy?"

Amelia flings the door open so fast and hard she's surprised that the hinges hold up. Claire stands on the step, small and hunched and distantly Amelia notes the sleek black shape of the car in the driveway, the fact that it doesn't belong to anybody she knows.

Then Claire is in her arms, turning the shoulders of her white silk blouse wet with tears and snot but she doesn't care, squeezes all the tighter to purge herself of the cold, leaden disbelief in her stomach, the small voice that whispers _you've finally snapped, Amelia _in tones of doubt. Claire's skin is hot and she smells strange, something like ozone, sharp and piercing, but she is a warm solid weight against Amelia's chest and her tears are definitely real and her eyes are the unmistakable blue of Jimmy's eyes.

Amelia feels her heart turn over, shivering on the edge of a drop. "Where's your father? Where's Jimmy?"

Claire lets out a high, gasping sob, tightens her grasp on Amelia's blouse. If she says anything it's lost in the violent shudder that rips through her body as though intent on taking her apart. Frightened, Amelia runs her hands soothingly down Claire's back, pressing down in order to tame the shaking. "Claire...it's all right, whatever it is, it's over..." she murmurs, lying through her teeth.

"Daddy's angel went bad," Claire confides, her voice small and afraid, tucked in on itself like a curled-up mouse. As if in a dream Amelia remembers the scavenger hunt through the house with Claire as the prize, finding her sleeping in the car serenaded by the white noise of the car radio. "I didn't want to, but Ca - Castiel said that he had to die - I'm so sorry - "

"Castiel is not real!" Amelia snaps. She draws Claire away and tilts her chin upward so their eyes meet. Her breaths are coming in short staccato bursts through her mouth and she has the dizzying feeling that if she looks out of the corners of her eyes she will see the world tilting around her in a physical manifestation of the storm brewing in her chest. The anger is old and instinctive and immersed in it Amelia can convince herself that everything is all right, can find some semblance of grounding and brace herself against it."Your Daddy isn't dead, because Castiel's not real. _Uriel _isn't real. Angels just don't - come down and talk to people like that. Tell me where he is, the last place you saw him -"

"I'm so sorry," Claire repeats, her eyes fixed on the horizon and some distant horror that plays beyond it. "I was supposed to help keep Daddy safe." Her face crumples up in utter, wretched misery before she hides it again in Amelia's shoulder. "Castiel left me," she murmurs, soft and laden with a guilt that Amelia can barely understand. "I'm glad she's gone, I don't think I can say yes again - "

"Don't," Amelia says quickly. She doesn't ever think she has ever hated Jimmy before, even in the worst of his delusions, but she does now, a thick liquid rage swelling her veins, a natural extension of her previous anger. Just what kind of sick fantasy has he planted in Claire's head, just how had he pulled this stunt off? If she ever sees him again - _he's alive he has to be - _but for now she's just glad that Claire is home. She'll deal with Jimmy later. He's been haunting her for too long, a dull ache in her stomach and a lingering scent on their bed she wants badly to exorcise, cut that presence out of her house and her body like the cancer it is, and it takes all her willpower not to break down then and there.

"I won't," Claire vows.

She introduces Amelia to the young men who had driven her home, and Amelia invites them to stay for dinner. It's the least she can do. The two brothers, Sam and Dean, are perfectly friendly and well-behaved to the point of stiffness, growing especially tense once she starts grilling them on where and how they had picked Claire up.

At this point the doorbell rings again and Amelia frowns; she doesn't expect any visitors tonight. "Excuse me," she says, pushing away from the table. "I'll be back in a second."

Roger waves at her through the crack in the door and Amelia feels some of the tension ease out of her spine. Claire had sat silent and sullen throughout the entire meal, barely eating, and maybe the presence of her Uncle Roger might help to wake her from her stupor. "Can I believe my eyes?" Roger asks, the sides of his mouth lifting up in a broad grin. "Was that _Claire _I saw going in a couple hours ago?"

"I know, Roger," Amelia says, smiling. It still feels incredible, like a juxtaposition between real life and her dreams, and she is glad to have someone else she knows confirm that this is _real, _that Claire's come back and never going away again if Amelia can help it. "You want to come in, invite Susan over?"

"Sure," Roger says easily. "We've all been so worried about Claire, you know. And Jimmy." He squints past her into her living room. "Didn't he come back too?"

Amelia's pulse speeds up as she unlatches the chain. "No," she says shortly. "He won't live long enough to regret it if he does."

"Wait!" Sam shouts, and Amelia blinks to see that he has followed her out of the dining room, but she doesn't have to listen to someone else's orders in her own damned house, and she opens the door.

-_end-_

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><p>Ending Notes: Argh, this didn't turn out the way I imagined it would in my head. Sorry, guys; I was having trouble particularly with parts five and six and I can only hope they don't drag <em>too <em>much. On the other hand, I think I may have written, however peripherally, the fandom's first Jimmy/Uriel, so uh...yay? =P


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